We chat with author Lauren Willig about What Happens at Nightfall, which is a delightfully Gothic romantic adventure, complete with a little bit of demon-hunting.
Hi, Lauren! Welcome back! What have you been up to since we last spoke in 2021 for the release of Band of Sisters?
Thanks so much for having me back! It’s been a busy five years. Since we last spoke, I travelled back to the Spanish American War with Clara Barton and Teddy Roosevelt in the prequel to Band of Sisters, Two Wars and a Wedding. Then I got to hang out in the courtroom with Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton as I delved into the true story of the Manhattan Well Murder, America’s first fully recorded murder trial, where Hamilton and Burr teamed up to save a man from the gallows even as they were tearing each other to shreds in the 1800 elections. That book, The Girl from Greenwich Street, is basically Law and Order: 1800! It’s been so much fun trotting around the country talking about Hamilton, Burr, and this amazing true crime from our country’s early days. Meanwhile, Beatriz Williams, Karen White, and I joined forces for two more very different Team W books: The Lost Summers of Newport, a multigenerational historical novel set among the iconic Gilded Age mansions of Newport, RI; and The Author’s Guide to Murder, a madcap contemporary murder mystery set on a remote Scottish island—with sheep! So what with all that, and now this contemporary paranormal romance—horromance?—What Happens at Nightfall, it’s been a bit of a whirlwind!
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I was that annoying girl who announced to my whole class in first grade that I was going to be a writer when I grew up. And since I went to a very tiny all girls’ school, once I’d said that, there was no walking it back! At the time, I’d just read E.L. Konigsburg’s A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver, her brilliant novel about Eleanor of Aquitaine. I fell in love both with Eleanor and with well-researched fiction with a humorous slant. I’ve been piling up manuscripts under my bed since then….
Your latest novel, What Happens at Nightfall, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Love among the mausoleums!
What can readers expect?
All the autumn feels! This book is set in Brooklyn’s historic Green-Wood Cemetery, acres and acres of hills and trees and gloriously grandiose funeral monuments. My heroine, who was fired from her finance job, has been dragged by her best friend on an evening tour of Green-Wood. Events take a strange turn when three terrified boys barrel through the group, knocking Jess’s bag off her shoulder. Separated from the tour, Jess finds one of the boys curled up against a gravestone. In taking him home to his father, the resident head of horticulture, in their marvelously creepy Gothic house at the far side of the cemetery, Jess kicks off an adventure (and a whole new life!) she could never have imagined. Second-chance romance, miffed Gilded Age ghosts, demon-hunting, family and found family—it’s all in What Happens at Nightfall!
Where did the inspiration for What Happens at Nightfall come from?
A few years ago, my editor emailed to let me know that she’d got hold of her husband’s family’s mausoleum keys at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. Did I want to come along with her to open them up? She’d bring coffee. How could I possibly say no to crypts and coffee? The experience of exploring those two mausoleums (mausolea?) was just as incredible as you would imagine, but it was the tour she gave me of her favorite bits of the cemetery that really fired my imagination, from the giant rhododendron with graves twined in its roots to my perfect Gothic dream house at the Fort Hamilton entrance. It looked like it had come straight off the cover of John Bellairs’s House with a Clock in Its Walls. When I asked my editor whose house it was, she told me, “The hot arborist lives there.” And that clinched it. Who can resist a hot arborist? By the time I wandered my way back to the subway, a story was already forming in my head. A child found crying by my heroine at the base of that crazy rhododendron; the hot arborist, in my head a widower with two kids; and an ancient evil unleashed from one of those incredible mausolea…. And here we are!
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
It’s not a spoiler to mention that there is, in fact, a demon in this book, a very annoyed demon who has been cooped up in a tomb for the past hundred and fifty years, nursing his resentment against Machiavelli (the blasted scribbler who wrote a scurrilous book about this demon during the Renaissance—lies, all lies!), and, of course, the people who managed to imprison him a hundred and fifty years ago. This is a demon with a grudge let loose on the big city and it was ridiculously fun to write a few short scenes from his viewpoint.
I also loved writing my arborist’s two kids, Melinda (15) and Ben (11). We’ve all come across unrealistic plot moppets who read as though they’ve been written by someone who has only encountered children by watching Disney movies of the 1950s, so it was both a joy and a challenge to create kids who sounded like, well, actual kids.
Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?
It was like the Charge of the Light Brigade: challenges to the right of me! Challenges to the left of me! There’s the constant challenge of being an author mom and knowing that any time you get that dreaded call from the school nurse (“He says his throat hurts; we think it might be strep”) there goes the rest of the writing day and probably several days to come. I was very lucky that thanks to my husband and parents I was able to clear the time to spend five days in the Catskills at the Deer Mountain Writers’ Retreat, which could not have been more magical—and, most importantly, gave me the concentration I needed to get to know these characters, find my voice, and get those crucial first few chapters written. As for the writing itself, my last few books had been heavy historicals deeply rooted in the historical record, so to be able to write whatever I wanted however I wanted to was both freeing and terrifying. It took me that time in the mountains to find the voice and pacing I needed for this new endeavor—and the comradeship and support of my darling Deers to get over being afraid of trying something new.
With it being the spooky season, what books, movies, or shows do you like to turn to?
Spooky Season is a huge thing for me. I’m an apple cider, pumpkin spice, plaid kilts and changing leaves sort of girl and this is my favorite time of year. When October rolls around, I take out my White Mountain Puzzles “Halloween House” puzzle, put the pumpkin-shaped soap dispensers in the bathrooms, get out my Halloween cookie pan, and settle down to re-read Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, Simone St. James’s Silence for the Dead (or any Simone St. James, really), the utterly creepy collected ghost stories of E.F. Benson, and John Harwood’s The Ghost Writer. Those are my staples, but I do like to branch out into new spooky reads every year, so if anyone has any recommendations, let me know! As for movies, I loved The Haunting of Hill House series that came out a few years ago, even though it was only loosely connected to the book (or maybe because it was only loosely connected to the book?) and I was mildly obsessed with the 2015 tv movie Harry Price: Ghost Hunter.
What’s next for you?
Shhhh… that’s a secret! Let’s just say it’s a new direction for me and I’ve had so much fun with it. I hope to be able to share the news soon, though!
Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up? Any you’ve read so far this year that you’ve enjoyed?
I just finished Riley Sager’s The Unknown, which I think is his best so far! I love the way he takes our own preconceptions, uses them against us, and then twists the narrative in a way you never saw coming. After this, I may need a reread of his Home Before Dark….
